Online game economies

Online video games are on track to become a $10 billion industry in 2009. If playing video games all day is your thing, it might seem like an attractive prospect to try to sell in-game stuff for real-world money (a World of Warcraft character famously sold for nearly $10,000 back in 2007).

The problem with trying to be competitive in online "gold farming" is that you'll be competing with 400,000 guys, typically Korean or Chinese, making $100 a month and working 12-hour days, so it's inadvisable unless you want to turn the game into a soul-numbing, 30-cents-an-hour ordeal.